Mississippi Humanities Council awards set

By Staff
special to The Star
Jan. 20, 2004
The Mississippi Humanities Council, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, will honor Public Humanities Awards recipients at the annual Mississippi Humanities Council awards dinner Feb. 6 in Jackson.
Each year the Mississippi Humanities Council recognizes people who have supported its work through public programs across the state based in the branches of learning such as history, literature, philosophy, ethics, culture, and language.
Ovid Vickers, author and retired English instructor from East Central Community College, and Dr. Martha Swain, author and history instructor at Mississippi State University, will share the Chair's Award for Special Achievements in the Humanities.
For more than 40 years, Vickers served as a member of the English faculty at ECCC in Decatur. Before he retired in 1995, he served twice as president of the Mississippi Council of Teachers of English, and in 1990 he was selected College English Teacher of the Year by the council.
Vickers' articles, essays, short stories and poems have appeared in such publications as Southern Living, Mississippi Magazine, The Texas Review, Southern Quarterly and The Yalobusha Review. As one of the founders of the Mississippi Folklore Society, he served for 25 years as an officer in that organization and contributed on a regular basis to the Mississippi Folklore Register. He also writes a weekly column for a number of Mississippi newspapers and has been honored on three occasions by the Mississippi Press Association for the best column in a weekly newspaper.
To make reservations for the Mississippi Humanities Council awards dinner or to request more information, call (601) 432-6752.
The Mississippi Humanities Council is funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi.
For information on Mississippi Humanities Council programs and grant applications, visit www.mshumanities.org.